AT&T's (NYSE: T) aggressive expansion into the Asia Pacific market has enabled it to obtain a leadership position in the region, according to IDC MarketScape's annual study.
IDC said that AT&T "continued to grow its presence and showed good execution in delivering connectivity and ICT services in Asia Pacific, taking advantage of its network and data center presence in the region."
A key method AT&T has used to build its presence in large Asia Pacific countries, including China and India, has been through a mix of its own network investments and partnerships with local providers such as China Telecom and Bharti Airtel.
It recently established a new Network-to-Network Interconnection (NNI) agreement with India's Bharti Airtel, which will enable its customers to access over 100 cities across India via over 130 of Bharti Airtel's MPLS-enabled IP network nodes.
No less important is China.
Earlier this year, the telco began offering a broader suite of networking services to multinational corporations that are expanding their presence in China through its long-running relationship with carrier partner China Telecom.
"Since the signing of the strategic framework agreement with China Telecom in late 2011, AT&T has made a number of significant progresses over the last one year in China," wrote IDC in its report. "The extended relationship has enabled AT&T to gain direct access to China Telecom-hosted AT&T global network (AGN) nodes; extend Ethernet access nationally, wherever China Telecom has service availability; and implement intra-China trunks linking the various AGN nodes, thus improving intra-China network latency, among others."
AT&T has also expanded the suite of services it offers China, including IP VPN, OPT-E-WAN and AT&T Connect services, and advanced solutions like telepresence, managed hosting and enterprise mobility solutions to enterprises.
It has also been expanding its presence in emerging markets such as Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia and has established a partnership with Vietnam's Viettel to deliver services in the country to serve its large U.S.-based MNC customers that have established a presence in these regions.
Despite the progress it has made in Asia Pacific, the research firm said that AT&T trails its competitors in cloud federation and orchestration services.
Although AT&T has been offering its managed utility computing solution, Synaptic Hosting, IDC wrote it is "lacking behind some of its competitors" that can "not only offer standardized enterprises application as a service (AaaS) but also could help them migrate their legacy and custom applications into the cloud environment."
IDC said that AT&T's new global strategic agreement with CSC "should help the provider expand its cloud capabilities if this partnership is well executed."
For more:
- see the release
- see the report (reg. req.)
Related articles:
AT&T and China Telecom serving up new international business services suite
AT&T expands service reach in India via Bharti Airtel pact